TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—The transcriber of this project created the book coverimage using the title page of the original book. The imageis placed in the public domain.
THE OLD IRISH WORLD
BY
ALICE STOPFORD GREEN
Author of “The Making of Ireland and its Undoing”
“Irish Nationality,” &c.
DUBLIN
M. H. GILL & SON, Ltd.
LONDON
MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1912
Some Irish friends have asked me to print certainlectures concerning Ireland to which they had listenedwith indulgence; and to reprint also former papersin a manner more convenient for country readers.This volume is the answer to their request. It willbe seen that I have not attempted to alter the lecturesfrom their first purpose and form.
The various studies, thus accidentally united, havea connecting link in such evidences as they maycontain of civilisation in the old Irish world. Ahundred years ago, in 1821, Dr. Petrie noted thatwhile the historians of ancient native origin wereunable in their poverty and degradation to pursuethe laborious study of antiquities, there were othersof a different class and origin who had taken up thesubject to bring it into contempt; and these indeedsucceeded in the cause for which they, unworthily,laboured. Forty years later he recognised the sameinfluences at work. It would appear, he said in aletter written to Lord Dunraven shortly before hisdeath in 1865, to be considered derogatory to thefeeling of superiority in the English mind to accept[vi]the belief that Celts of Ireland or Scotland could havebeen equal, not to say superior in civilisation to theirmore potent conquerors, or that they could haveknown the arts of civilised life till these were taughtthem by the Anglo-Normans. After the lapse ofhalf a century we can still trace the same spirit—sopowerful have been the hindrances to serious andimpartial enquiry—so slow has been the decline ofracial prejudice and political complacency. But inthese latter days a great change has silently passed overthe peoples. The difficulties of historical researchand instruction do indeed remain as great as ever;but in the new society which we see shaping itself inIreland on natural and no longer on purely artificiallines, there is no reason to fear truth as dangerousor to neglect it as unnecessary. There is now a publicready to be interested not only in Danish and Normancivilisation in Ireland, but also in the Gaelic culturewhich embraced these and made them its own.
I cannot adequately thank Professor Eoin MacNeillfor generously allowing me to embody in my firstchapter some of his researches on the history of theScot wanderings between Scotland and Ireland;it is earnestly to be hoped that he will publish beforelong the results of his original work.
I owe my warm thanks also to Mr. F. J. Bigger forh